Help Center
< All Topics
Print
Updated

Introduction

This document describes how to use the Speakeasy Groups and Meetings app to edit the membership of various Speakeasy activity groups and to record attendance at meetings of those groups.

Instructions

Launch the Speakeasy Groups and Meetings app from Microsoft Teams. There is a  “Groups and Meetings” tab available via the Speakeasy…Contact Details and Activity team. See the screenshot below:

Having launched the app, a screen should appear similar to that shown below:
Instructions for using the app are given below.

Creating a New Group

To create a new group, from the application home screen click the “+” sign to the left of the GroupName item in the title banner – see the screenshot above.

Editing a Group

To edit an existing group, from the application home screen click the pencil icon which appears under the “Edit” heading column. A screen will appear, similar to the following:

The name of the group can be modified in the “Group Name” field. The status can also be changed, e.g. if the group is no longer active, it can be set to “Archived”.
There are two categories of group:
  • groups without a fixed membership. In this case, the “Limit attendees to group members” is set to “No” (as in the screen above). This type of group is used where anyone can attend the group, e.g. the Ramsbottom CC meetings.
  • groups with a fixed membership. In this case, the “Limit attendees to group members” would be set to “Yes”. This type of group is used where the group consists of a limited membership, usually contacts who have previously registered their interest to attend various closed meeting sessions. See the screenshot below, which shows the screen appearance when “Limit attendees to group members” is set to “Yes”:

It can be seen that an “Edit group members” button appears.

Adding a New Member to a Group

To edit the members of an existing group, click the “Edit group members”button. A list of group members should appear, similar to that shown below (the names are obfuscated due to GDPR regulations):

To add a member, click the “+” icon in the top right-hand side of the App. The following screen will appear:

The group can comprise contacts of different types. To add a PWA, select a “MemberType” of “PWA” and pick a PWA from the “Member Name”. Similarly, Carers, SLTs, Staff/Volunteers and Guests can be added. The content of the “Member Name” dropdown list will vary according to the selected MemberType.
Having completed the details, click the tick icon in the top right-hand side of the app to save the details or click the cross icon at the top left-hand side to cancel adding a member. Control will return to the member list and the newly added group member should be included in the list, alongside a bracketed description of the contact type of the member.

Removing a Member from a Group

From the application home screen, select a particular group. A list of members should appear, similar to that shown below (the names are obfuscated due to GDPR regulations):

Simply click the trashcan icon to the right of the group member’s name to remove that member from the group.

Deleting a Group

It is recommended that the group be archived rather than deleted. However, it is possible to easily delete a group providing (a) all its individual members are first deleted and (b) there are no recording group sessions. To delete a group, select the group from the application home screen, then click the trashcan icon to the right of the group name.  If the group still has members or has meeting sessions recorded against that group, – a warning will appear which reads “The group cannot be deleted as it has members. Remove all members from the group before deleting it”. Follow the instructions in the section below titled “Removing a Member from a Group” to delete all the members. It should then be possible to delete the group.

Email Distribution Lists

To make it easy to contact members of a group via a single email address, an email distribution list is automatically created for all groups which have a fixed membership (i.e.”Limit attendees to group members” is set to “Yes”). The distribution list is automatically updated if the group membership changes – usually within 48 hours. For more information, see: Synchronisation of Email Distribution Lists
Note that not a small number of members have no registered email address (or carer email address) so it is not totally fail-safe.

Creating a Group Session (i.e. a meeting)

A new group session can be created by clicking the “>” chevron for one of the groups, under the “Sessions” column. See below:

The screen below shows the sessions when “Ramsbottom CC” is selected:

A new session can be created by clicking the + button in the blue column header, to the left of the “Session/Meeting Name” (see the image above). After the + button is clicked a screen will be displayed similar to that shown below:

Specify a name for the session, plus the date – leave the status as “Active”. Specify a duration for the session. e.g. Ramsbottom CC meetings typically last 135 minutes. If payments will be taken during the session, make sure the “Include Payment Details” setting is set to “Yes”. Click the tick at the top right hand side of the app to save the session, or click the cross in the top left hand side to cancel without saving.

Editing/changing the Group Session Details

To edit an existing group session title or date, click the pencil icon which appears under the “Edit” heading column:

The screen below shows the results of editing session “February session 2”:

The details can then be edited using the same screen as that for adding a new session, as described in the previous section above. Sessions which have been added in error can also be deleted by clicking the trashcan icon to the right of the session/meeting name. However, a session can’t be deleted if it has members registered against it.
Note: it is recommended that, when adding new sessions, older group sessions (e.g. previous month’s and earlier sessions at Ramsbottom CC) are regularly set to a status of “Archived”. This helps to avoid cluttering up the app with old sessions. All attendee data for archived sessions is still retained,  thus enabling to be included in any historical reports.

Adding Attendees to the Group Session

To add attendees to a group  session, click the appropriate people icon (the icon to the immediate right of the pencil icon).  The screenshot below shows details of a previous Ramsbottom CC session, including grand totals of payment details (names have been obfuscated for GDPR reasons):

However, for a newly registered group session, the screen that will be displayed will look blank:

Click the + button at the top right hand side of the app. The following dialog will appear:

For each attendee, first pick the MemberType – this is typically PWA for Ramsbottom CC, but attendees can be PWAs, Carers, SLTs, staff/volunteers or guests. The second dropdown box on the screen will change, according to the selected value of MemberType.  e.g.
  • if the user selects “PWA”, they can then pick from a list of all active PWAs
  • if the user selects “PWA and Carer”, they can then pick from a list of all active PWAs, and then pick a carer from the selected PWA’s list of associated carers.
  • if the user picks “Staff/Volunteer”, they can then pick from a list of all active Staff/Volunteers.
  • if the user picks “SLT”, they can then pick from a list of all active SLTs.
  • if the user picks “Guest”, they can then pick from a list of all active guests or register a new guest. See the next section for instructions on how to do this
Payment details will be requested if the “Include Payment Details” setting was set to “Yes” for the session. If payment details don’t appear and you  need them to do so, edit the session details as described in the previous two sections of this document, then return to the session.

Registering a Guest Attendee

Occasionally, Speakeasy group sessions are attended by persons other than PWAs, e.g. a healthcare professional or SLT. In this case, their details may not already exist in the Speakeasy database. Also, some PWAs attend before they have formally registered their details with Speakeasy, so they may also need to be registered as a guest.
With MemberType set to “Guest”, first try typing their name in to see if they have already been registered, e.g. as a guest at a previous meeting. If the guest can’t be found, click the “Add Guest” button which appears next to the guest name dropdown list, as seen below:
The following screen should then appear:
Specify a name and click the tick icon to save.